Sometimes, it’s the closest people in your life that turn out to be the biggest detriments to your well-being, energy, and general happiness — even if you’re not entirely aware of it. Your inner circle dictates your reality, so they can easily impact how you navigate your life.
For the most part, friends offer love and support whether you’re navigating life challenges or celebrating victories, but sometimes, emotions like insecurity and jealousy can twist into feelings of competition. If your friends feel more like opposing teammates than supportive cheerleaders, your relationship may have strayed into unhealthy territory.
Friendship coach Sabrina Kirber said there are early warning signs to pay attention to that can give you a heads up that your bestie might not have the best intentions. She explained, “Friends that start a competition with you actually start off admiring you. This is such a hard lesson to learn.”
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Like Kirber described in her video, imagine that you’re a very active person — you love walking, working out, doing exercise classes with friends — and your new friend’s “knee-jerk” reaction is to say that you’re “doing so much.”
“Pay attention to how people speak to you at the beginning of your relationship,” she said. “Somebody that’s viewing you as competition is going to say… ‘you’re doing too much.’”
Instead of being inspired by your initiative, this friend lets their insecurity spill out, making you doubt your decisions or, worse, making you feel like you need to hide part of your life from them.
They’re putting you on a pedestal from the very beginning of your friendship, only to break it down, hurt you, and compete with you to make themselves feel better.
Codependent relationships, whether they’re platonic or romantic, can be incredibly toxic for both parties. Independence is essential in all healthy relationships, but according to Sharon Martin, a psychotherapist in San Jose, CAcodependency is a dysfunctional relationship where one person loses themselves in their attempt to take care of someone else.”
“It’s like they idolize you at the beginning,” one commenter shared, “and don’t really see you as human. When you don’t meet the expectation they expect, they switch up on you.”
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If you’re constantly sharing things about your life, only to be met with a friend who’s always doing something better, more exciting, or more worthy of celebration than you — chances are you’re not the problem.
Many toxic friendships start with these kinds of small comments, which illuminate a person’s insecurity, true intentions, or disregard for their “friend’s” emotions.
“They say things like this to minimize what you’re saying in your passions and what you’re interested in,” Kirber explained, “because they immediately see you as competition.”
If someone feels inherently superior to their friends, they likely feed off of the competition and validation.
People struggling with insecurity thrive on validation, competition, and negative gossip about others. They are always looking to put someone else down to make themselves feel bigger without putting any genuine work into growing themselves.
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If you’re meeting new friends or even dating and you notice that someone is operating from a place of insecurity, always looking for validation, overstepping in conversation, or talking poorly about people in their lives, that should be an immediate red flag.
“People who are very insecure view others as competition,” Kirber said. “People with self-confidence view themselves as their own competition because they’re in it for growth.”
It’s these small subtleties, which can sometimes fly under the radar early on in relationships, can truly make or break your mental health and well-being down the road.
Consider the way your gut instinct is reacting to new friends, how your energy levels fluctuate when you’re around them, and how your confidence grows or wanes — it will tell you everything you need to know.
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Zayda Slabbekoorn is a News & Entertainment Writer at YourTango who focuses on health & wellness, social policy, and human interest stories
